More people than you might think are keeping chickens in their backyards. These birds, just as those grown commercially, are at risk to the H5N2 Avian Influenza virus. Todd Gleason has more on why and what keepers of backyard flocks can do to protect their birds.

Turkeys and chickens along the Mississippi River flyway…

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Turkeys and chickens along the Mississippi River flyway in the Midwest are at risk to catching the flu every year. This year a new highly contagious version of the virus called H5N2 has developed. It’s nasty and a bird killer. This is why the U.S. government is taking so much care to control its spread. The farm manager of the University of Illinois’ poultry research facilities, Chet Utterback, says commercial flocks aren’t the only birds at risk.

ifr150417–462014 Loss Experience for Revenue Protection Products
Gary Schnitkey, Ag Economist - University of Illinois The Risk Management Agency has published federal crop insurance data for 2014. Todd Gleason has more on what the information shows. The RMA data for most of the 2014 COMBO product insurance…
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2:20 radio self contained The RMA data for most of the 2014 COMBO product insurance payments is published in the agency’s Summary of Business report. It is possible to use the data to calculate the loss performance of a product. You do that by dividing the losses by total premiums collected. Revenue Protection, or R-P crop insurance, is designed to have a ratio of one. It is supposed, over time, to pay out as much as it takes in to the system says University of Illinois Ag Economist Gary Schnitkey. Schnitkey :17 …you would expect to be on a long run basis. Quote Summary - Some years you would expect higher than that, like 2012, and some years lower than that. Last year …

Most of the 2014 insurance payments on COMBO products have been entered into Risk Management Agency’s Summary of Business, allowing us to calculate loss performance for individual products accurately. This article describes loss performance for Revenue Protection (RP), a revenue insurance plan used to insure most acres in the United States.

Corn, soybeans, and wheat had loss ratios of 1.04, .54, and 1.12, respectively. Loss ratios were above 1.0 in many counties of Iowa and Minnesota for corn and soybeans. Counties in the southern Great Plains had loss ratios above 1.0 for wheat. In Illinois, RP loss ratios were .40 for corn and .24 for soybeans.

Corn

In 2014, RP was used to insure 69.9 million acres of corn in the United States, representing 88% of total acres insured with crop insurance. Total premium on RP products was $3,350…

ifr150403–39The Footprint of Chinese Demand for U.S. Soybeans
John Newton, Ag Economist - University of IllinoisOne out of every four bushels of soybeans harvested by U.S. farmers last fall, if the trend continues, will be shipped to China. Todd Gleason explores how this happened and what it means. Two University of Illinois agricultural economists…
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2:16 tv self containedSOUNDCLOUD EMBED CODEYOUTUBE EMBED CODETwo University of Illinois agricultural economists have measured the footprint of Chinese demand for soybeans. John Newton, along with Todd Kuethe (keeth-ee), say this one nation takes 13 bushels from every acre of soybeans produced in the United States. Newton :28 …very large footprint in our soybean market.Quote Summary - The Chinese are bringing in more than a billion bushels of soybeans a year from the United States. That’s more than the states of Illinois and Iowa produced combined. Their total needs from around the world amount t…